Jigsaw Man : He Plasters Walls, Ceilings, Floors With 1,135 Puzzles

Charley Lang has finally reached a goal he set for himself seven years ago. And he’s excited. What he has done, he believes, is incredible. Unbelievable. Nothing even remotely like it has ever been done before, he said. Never, not in all of human history.

He has covered almost every square inch of space inside his six-room home in Carson--with jigsaw puzzles. One million pieces.

They’re everywhere. On the walls, on the ceilings, in the corners, on some floors, on both sides of doors. They spread into a six-sided gazebo--one of two rooms that Lang, a retired bartender, built himself to gain more space for his puzzles. The vast mosaic creeps across a floor and climbs over box-shaped tables.

Lang said he used 1,135 puzzles--discards from friends or sets he purchased for 79 cents each from thrift shops--to complete his masterwork. After assembling a set, he coated its back with glue--the whole project required 16 gallons--painstakingly measured and cut it to fit the next available space, then applied more glue to make it stick in place.

The result is an awe-inspiring panorama of scenes from around the world--from the Swiss Alps to Montana’s prairies, from Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” to Norman Rockwell’s portraits of America.

“When people come in here, their jaws drop,” said Lang, who at 66 seems to have more energy and enthusiasm than many men half his age. “They can’t believe that anyone would do something like this. But I did it. Me, Charley Lang.”

Lang has known for several weeks that he was near the 1-million mark. So, the other day, he added up the numbers--the total number of puzzle pieces in each room is posted over the door--and came up with the magic number. Plus a few extra.

“At first I couldn’t believe I had reached the end,” he said. “So I added up the numbers again and came up with the same total. Imagine it! A million pieces!”

Some simple calculations attest to the magnitude of Lang’s feat. An average puzzle piece, Lang figured, is one inch wide. So if the puzzle pieces were laid end to end, the line would extend 15.8 miles. Or, if it went straight up, the line would reach the top of the stratosphere.

‘Let Happiness Seep In’

It was time to celebrate, but Lang didn’t rush out to announce the news to his friends and neighbors.

“I just sat down and looked around at my puzzles and let the happiness seep in,” he said, inviting a visitor with a wave of his hand to join in his enjoyment. “It is pretty, isn’t it? Some people say this should be a museum.”

Lang doesn’t intend to keep his achievement a secret. Certainly, he thinks, the Guinness Book of Records will want to include him in its next report on the extraordinary things people do to leave their mark.

Lang, a bartender for nearly 40 years, started his puzzle project shortly before he retired. He said he did not want to just sit around, growing old and tired of living. So he began modestly, pasting up a few puzzles in his enclosed front porch. Gradually, he began to entertain a vision: Why stop at a few thousand pieces?

“I couldn’t wait to finish one puzzle and start another,” he said. “When I was working, I closed everything else out. I didn’t want to talk with anyone, not even my wife.”

‘Patient, Understanding’

He said that Marjorie Lang, his wife of 26 years, has been “very patient and understanding. The other day she came into the back room, looked around at all my puzzles and just shook her head. All she said was, ‘My husband did this.’ ”

Over the years, Lang said, his puzzle skills improved to a point where he could put together a 1,000-piece set in a long day, about 10 hours of uninterrupted work. “The tougher the puzzle, the better I like it, because then I can feel challenged,” he said.

Some people, Lang acknowledged, may scoff at a grown man who spends seven years of his life putting together jigsaw puzzles and plastering them all over his house. And some look at him strangely when he says he wants to be buried with a very complicated puzzle in his hands.

But, Lang said, his passion for puzzles, however eccentric it may seem, has filled his retirement years with excitement, adventure and beauty.

And now that the millionth piece is in place, he is thinking about what he will do next. Maybe he will build a pyramid in his back yard; the geometry intrigues him. Maybe he will paste more puzzles inside and cut windows in the walls so people can see them.

“Whatever it is,” he said, “I know it’s going to be challenging and exciting. I can hardly wait to get started.”